17 August 2005 Issued by Arthritis Research Campaign

Leeds shoulder treatment the best, clinical trial aims to prove
A new clinical trial to be run in collaboration with the University of Leeds aims to prove that people in the city who have painful shoulder problems are among the best treated in the country.

A team of city-based physiotherapists are about to start a two-year clinical trial testing the effectiveness of treatment currently given to patients in Leeds, which could lead to it being taken up nationally.

Up to 200 local patients over the age of 50 are to take part in the trial, which is due to start recruitment later this summer. Shoulder pain is a common and disabling condition affecting mainly older people.

Derbyshire-based national medical research charity the arthritis research campaign (arc) has awarded the Leeds researchers nearly £94,000 to carry out the trial.

One group of 100 patients will be given physiotherapy and exercise over a 12-week period, while the other will have a corticosteroid injection followed by physiotherapy and exercise a week later – a treatment regime already being used in Leeds.

"In other parts of the country, GPs will often give patients steroid injections but then because of waiting lists they have to wait for about two months to get their physiotherapy, by which time the effect of the injection is starting to wear off, and they find moving their shoulder too painful," explained Dickon Crawshaw, an extended scope physiotherapist at Leeds musculoskeletal and rehabilitation service, who will co-ordinate the trial.

"But in Leeds, patients are already given a steroid injection by their physiotherapist, followed by physiotherapy and exercise a week later, when they still have reasonable pain relief. If we can prove that this is an effective way of treating these patients, then this service will be rolled out to other parts of the country."

People will be recruited from among patients referred by GPs to the Leeds musculoskeletal and rehabilitation service. The service, which operates in several centres in the city, is a citywide primary care run service which sees about 26,000 patients a year, and is a multi-disciplinary team of predominantly physiotherapy podiatrists and doctors specialising in musculoskeletal conditions. The trial is being run in collaboration with the University of Leeds' academic unit of musculoskeletal disease.

Physiotherapist and other allied health professionals are playing an ever-bigger role in treating musculoskeletal conditions in primary care, and arc is increasingly funding more non-medics to carry out clinical research, and encouraging allied health professionals to develop careers in academic research.

For more information please contact arc press officer Jane Tadman on 01246 541107.